Tom Trago - Shutters

Tom Trago - ShuttersRush Hour just wants it, don't they? Here they are, rolling over from the year of their lives with a disco track that's both giddy and restrained, like a very smart dress that happens to look like a birthday cake. There's definitely an Ibizan breeze blowing through Tom Trago's new one, though it never gets totally barefoot in the head—your moves are limited on sand, and "Shutters" is definitely meant for moving. That dual quality comes out especially well as the instrumental flourishes grow wilder—swelling analog synth, slow-rising dub boing FX—over a groove that evokes expensive '80s synths as easily as it does hideously expensive '70s ones.

The dub ups the drama. Here, Trago puts everything through just enough filtering to make itself present but not the focus—tweaking the basic elements till they glow and smear, like neon in the rain. Suddenly, at about 3:10, everything slowly disintegrates, and the graininess of the sound reveals itself; when the instruments come back, they're in focus for a while, but soon things muddy again. It's a roller-coaster, and the side a lot of DJs prefer. I do too. But this release is as much a triumph of foundation as abstraction.

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Tom Trago’s relationship with music is particularly intense. “I couldn’t imagine life without music,” he says. “I feel this physical need to make music every day. It’s like my body needs it as much as it needs food, water or sunshine.”
Right now, Trago’s immersion in music is almost total. An internationally renowned DJ, producer, live performer and label owner with three critically acclaimed albums to his name, the Dutchman divides his time between all-day studio sessions, DJ gigs and live shows all over the world, and a steady stream of musical collaborations with friends from Amsterdam and beyond. You sometimes wonder how he finds any time for sleep.
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